3 ms·
What happens to a generation raised in a world where misinformation is criminalized? Does critical thinking lapse? Do people just assume all published works are
by liquidise 8y ago
What happens to a generation raised in a world where misinformation is criminalized? Does critical thinking lapse? Do people just assume all published works are authoritative by definition? Not an experiment i’d care to see played out.
The current fake news tug-o-war might actually make citizens more scrutinizing of their news, not less.
- Const-me 8y agoCritical thinking doesn't scale. I can only apply critical thinking to my area of expertise, software development, and a few others I happen to have experience outside work. When I read stuff about unrelated matters like art, medicine, psychology, or politics, I only have some heuristics to detect obvious BS or bad actors, but they are very inaccurate because I'm not an expert.
- pjc50 8y agoMore to the point, you can't apply "critical thinking" to a statement in isolation. You can only apply it using the context of things that you already know, or other sources you can get at. If trust in those is destroyed, it becomes genuinely impossible to know things. (If you want a not too controversial example of this, look at popular nutritional science, which is a battleground of constantly shifting ideas and discredited experiments)